Oakland’s King Woman, a solo project that became a full-on band, makes music that’s both deeply heavy and rapturously pretty. The group’s sound is doom metal, more or less, but it’s doom metal that sounds more like Mazzy Star than like Black Sabbath or Sleep. Bandleader Kris Esfandiari sings in a sleepy murmur, over tidal riffs and atmospheric open space, and the sound has as much to do with goth and folk as it does with metal.

Three years ago, King Woman released a powerful debut LP called Created In The Image Of Suffering. This summer, they’ll follow that album with the new one Celestial Blues. The band recorded the album with Deafheaven/Jeff Rosenstock/Gulch producer Jack Shirley, and they’ve just shared the wild video for first single “Morning Star.”

“Morning Star” starts out as a torch song, but in its four minutes, it builds up skull-crush levels of intensity without ever losing its narcotic beauty. At the end, Esfandiari softly chants, “Lucifer, falling from the heights” over and over. In the Muted Widows-directed video, a camera spins around Esfandiari, who’s made up as a nightmarish, apocalyptic mime and who seems to be in a darkened murder-warehouse. It’s fucking cool! Watch it below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Celestial Blues”
02 “Morning Star”
03 “Boghz”
04 “Golgotha”
05 “Coil”
06 “Entwined”
07 “Psychic Wound”
08 “Ruse”
09 “Paradise Lost”

Celestial Blues is out 7/30 on Relapse.